


Stage Lights

by knaval



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, News Media AU, Oblivious Stiles, Reporter Derek, TV News, camerman stiles, news studio au, tv news au, weatherman derek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 10:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3406640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knaval/pseuds/knaval
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles likes to think that the person behind the camera and the person in front of it always have a very special relationship. Until his and Derek’s relationship seems to be one of utter animosity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stage Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles lives in a constant state of denial, okay? It’s a coping mechanism.

Stiles has been on camera two since forever. Yeah, when he got into this industry he meant to go into larger, bigger, grander things, but he's comfortable here.

He used to be so obsessed with Lydia, star news reporter and the Katie Couric of beacon hills, but now that's all behind them. And he somewhat blames the camera, because spending all day looking at someone through a lens tends to lead to those things. It’s hard not to admire perfection when staring at her all day, close up, focusing and back focusing and framing the shot while trying to figure out how to best frame/angle perfection.

Stiles considers the relationship of the news anchor and the camera operator to be very special. Every single day of the job, they were on point. When she moved, she gave her subtle cue and he would know a split second before she started walking to move the camera with her. They had it down to a science, not even Scott and Alison were that in sync. If she tossed her hair, she was going to walk forward, he was going to need to dolly backwards. Should she drop her right hip, she was going to walk right, and he would turn the camera to follow her, the same actions mirrored for the left. He probably could paint her from memory at this point, if he could paint. He knew her hair and eye color to the paint chip number at this point. His obsession was probably why he never left Beacon Hills in the first place. He turned down a couple job offers to film documentaries and independent pictures because of it.

But thankfully, now he was over it. And they were friends. It was nice being able to walk into work every morning, wave at Isaac at the TelePrompTer and Boyd on CG, to grab his headset from Erica and exchange good mornings over bagels. Around then, their director (who insisted on being called coach for whatever reason) Finstock would snap, “Get to work, slackers!”

Stiles stopped by Scott to chat with him about last night’s episode of Supernatural, following Scott’s line of sight when he replied disinterestedly.

Greenberg had just finished doing Allison’s makeup, which meant she was correcting what he had smudged with her little compact mirror. Scott sighed in a way that reminded Stiles of several cliché romance movies, and continued to stare at Allison. Despite his constant fawning over her, Scott got all hurt puppy-eyed whenever Stiles tried to distract him from her or mention the obsession. One time, he had complained about it, one time! Still, he was thankful to hear Erica’s voice crackle over their headsets, “McCall, those microphones aren’t going to set up themselves.”

Though technically it was Erica’s job to set up the mics, she had designated that part of the job (‘It requires legwork.’) to Scott, since her last Sound Assistant quit.

Beacon Hills Live at Five was a small broadcasting station to begin with, and Finstock was particularly fond of firing people. It was a miracle Stiles and Scott had been able to keep their jobs with him long enough to discover that he didn’t actually have the power to fire people, it was just that most people thought he did and never showed up after, that they constantly needed to hire new people. Stiles had lost count of the amount of times he and Scott had been ‘fired’.

More often than not, they didn’t hire new people, and odds jobs were left for the people that knew the ropes well enough to pick up the slack. Stiles sometimes covered hair and makeup when Finstock ‘fired’ Greenberg until they explain to him again that he “wasn’t actually fired, that was just something Finstock says to people when he’s pissed.”

He watched Scott the Sound Guy gather up the wires quickly to timidly approach Allison. In the moments where Stiles had nothing to do, it was always entertaining to watch Scott try to thread the lavaliere microphone wire up the inside of Allison's shirt (even more awkwardly when she wore a dress). Since Scott was only trained for camera one and not Sound Assistant, no one had ever told him the trade secret of just threading the wire under the arm instead of down the front of the shirt to make it less awkward. Stiles, having once been Sound Assistant, often wondered if he should tell him.

Stiles rolled his eyes at that, because whenever Scott did mic setup for Lydia, he often just handed her the lavaliere so she could thread it herself. However, if the first part wasn’t awkward enough, there was when he had to try to clip the mic somewhere inconspicuous but where it could still pick up sound. This meant watch Scott try very gentlemanly to slip the lavaliere onto her shirt collar without touching her breasts, only to turn red and apologize profusely whenever he accidentally did. Allison, being a trooper and a ray of sunshine, would just calm him with a seemingly endless stream of “it’s okay, really, it is.”

Stiles had asked Erica once why they didn’t just dig the boom mike out of the back closet and save everyone the hassle, but apparently this was Erica’s morning entertainment too.

Stiles watched Scott imitate an awkward teenager trying to pin a corsage on their junior prom date a few moment longer before he finished his bagel and got to his own station, to line up his camera on his favorite strawberry blonde newscaster-

Not Lydia?

He was used to lining it up with Lydia’s shorter stature, instead coming into view with a suit jacket over broad shoulders and a dress shirt and tie over what the camera lens seemed to suggest was a very muscular chest. He pulled the camera around to face a particularly breathtaking face, not petite redhead but tall dark and handsome.

Not Lydia.

He maneuvered the camera upward, to encounter a stupidly stoic stubble, menacing eyebrows and the sourest expression he had ever seen on another living being. The last time he saw that expression it was on a cat. And it was not nearly as gorgeous as it was on the guy. He looked again, back-focusing and playing with the zoom, lining up the shot out of habit more than anything.

Definitely not Lydia.

But Lydia was always on camera. She wasn't sick, he saw her yesterday. She never took a vacation day without telling the entire city where she was going. Literally, she always mentioned it in a second of improvisation before signing off.

She was always there.

And yet there was a dude in her spot. An extremely attractive, albeit grumpy looking, dude. Apparently he hadn't gotten the memo that frowning was no longer the new sexy. Though it definitely worked for him.

Lydia was going to be so mad that he was in her spot. That spot was hers exactly because that angle and only that angle best accentuated her features. She had spent a week arguing with Stiles about that, making his camera work difficult when he tried to change it.

Scott’s voice was buzzing in his ear and then Finstock’ voice crackled through. Before he was could even register what was going on, the unfairly attractive dude straightened his tie and brushed some imaginary dust off his shoulder, aiming a smolder directly at Stiles' camera.

It nearly rendered Stiles catatonic when he forgot the guy on the other side couldn't see him, and wasn't actually smoldering at him.

When Stiles didn't say the call, Scott picked it up for him, counting down with a hand, "Talent: ready in five, four, three, two..."

He pointed to the dude standing in Lydia’s spot, and the stage was hushed, the guy beaming at the camera in smile that blew Stiles away. The only thing that kept him from blasting off Team-Rocket style was his hands clammily clutching the handlebars.

"Good morning Beacon Hills, this is Derek Hale, reporting to you live from Beacon Hills Five! Tune in so you can know the news before your neighbor does! This morning..."  
He continued on his morning news spiel hot off the TelePrompTer, but all Stiles had really caught was that his name was Derek hale.

"Camera one, take one," the voice in his headset buzzed, and the red tally light on Stiles’ camera turned off, flicking on above Scott’s camera. And just like that, in a swift and highly professional turn, Derek was angling that smolder at camera one, Scott was apparently immune to it, as he texted Isaac on the side. In the brief spans of time that Derek wasn’t turning his Jedi mind tricks on Stiles, he barely managed to shake off the residual effects and piece together that this guy must be Lydia’s replacement. Which still didn’t make any sense because she wasn’t being replaced.

Time passed by unnoticed as Stiles played with the focus lens, which somehow ended up on Derek’s face (it was in his job description, okay?). It was a fairly close up shot, nothing extreme, but it could still be further out. This was what Stiles loved about looking at the world through the camera: really only looking at one thing at a time. Not like with the naked eyes, where there’s a million different things in a stupidly wide scope, all of which can be focused upon in an instant. Everything grabbed for his attention there. No, here the camera looked at one thing, focuses only on it, and stays put. Of late that had been becoming less true, but Stiles believed it was because he had been getting too used to the camera, that his hands worked too closely with his brain, maneuvering the camera as easily as his eyes would dart about in real life.

Nevertheless, they were in a studio now, and there was only one thing in front of the camera, and that was Derek Hale and his stupidly gorgeous and deceiving smile.

Stiles had long forsaken the need to glance away in the face of astounding beauty, in its stead found the ability to stare uncomfortably long and unabashedly. He could feel his face begin to warm up as Finstock’s voice buzzed “Camera Two!” in his headset and Derek turned back to look at him. His eyes looked right through the camera to Stiles, like he could see right through it. Stiles’ face burned.

Just as he wondered if he’d ever be able to look at Derek outside the safety of the camera lens, he could smell the burnt dust coming off the lights as they were shut off. The stage lights were hot. They weren’t even pointed at the anchors or cameramen directly, and he could feel the heat filling up the room. It was because of the stage lights that he felt warmer than usual, and it wasn’t because Derek was staring, no glaring right at him again, even though the camera.

"Stiles!"

Scott called his name just as he was spending a little longer than necessary to back-focus on Derek Hale's five o'clock shadow--through the camera lens he could count every hair if he wanted to, when Scott jerks him away from the screen.

“Dude, it's been ten minutes since we went off air,” Scott informs him, and wait, what?

**Author's Note:**

> Had this prompt hanging around for a while, not sure when I'll finish it. The idea kinda came up since I used to do a mock news studio with my high school. 
> 
> It's been a while since I've written any fanfic, so if anyone has any ideas they'd like to see happen, I'm open to suggestion!
> 
> comment comment comment!!! from these three ingredients, new chapters are born


End file.
